Nadhir Ashafiq

Kerugian dalam bisnes itu adalah suatu perkara yang biasa. Anggaplah itu sebagai “yuran tuisyen” yang kita perlu bayar dalam perjalanan kita menjadi jutawan.

Tetapi apa yang kita tidak mahu adalah kerugian ratusan ribu ringgit untuk idea yang unproven atau tidak diketahui sama sekali peluang kejayaannya.

Ngeri.

Namun begitu, risiko ini dapat dikurangkan sekiranya kita menjalankan proses validasi idea bisnes itu terlebih dahulu sebelum bermula.

Validasi?

Validasi apa ni Nadhir? Kita nak buat eksperimen sains ke?

Tepat sekali.

Continue reading “Validasi: Bagaimana Hendak Menguji Idea Startup dan Kurangkan Risiko Rugi” »

Back in June 2016, I was looking for a digital marketing guy to take over our FB & Google Ads responsibilities.

But it’s difficult to gauge a person’s skills in digital marketing by just doing interviews.

So I had them do a case study, to be submitted on the same day.

Below is the case study:

Continue reading “How I hired an amazing Digital Marketing specialist” »

It has been close to a year since I wrote Making TheLorry.com: A journey from idea validation to being VC-funded.

As 2016 comes to a close, this article will highlight our hits, misses and key learnings for upcoming entrepreneurs.

The Chilli’s Summit

Fresh from receiving our Series A funds (USD1.5 million), Chee and I had dinner at Chilli’s early January 2016 to discuss top-level strategy and our plans for the year.

Quite simply, the goal was to grow x% by December 2016 in terms of revenue, number of bookings and gross profit.

We also discussed division of labour – I was to handle our bread-and-butter B2C business while Chee took on the fast-growing B2B department.

Continue reading “Making TheLorry.com: A year of growth and learning” »

On 19th January 2016, we announced our USD1.5 million Series A funding round. This is what happened behind the scenes.

Scaling up

When I wrote this post about TheLorry’s story on idea validation on Nov 2014, we were still basically a two-man team (two-man and a half if you count a freelance developer). I was doing mostly customer service & operations work whereas my partner and co-founder Chee Hau was in charge of marketing & sales.

(Btw, if you were our customer and noticed a certain “Adam” replying – that was me. “Adam” was my customer service alter-ego.)

As we started to get traction, we were convinced that our idea is sufficiently validated and it was time to put in more resource to take it to the next level.

Since tech is our core competency, we felt we should get a developer on board full-time. Freelance won’t work. Our credit cards were already maxed out so we needed to look for outside money in order to start hiring.

Continue reading “Making TheLorry.com — A journey from idea validation to being VC-funded” »

How to build a product on the right foot

Ok, so you’re driving back home after a mamak session with your friends. As you’re about to turn into the Kota Damansara exit of NKVE you suddenly get a moment of epiphany — you have an idea for a really cool website that hasn’t been done before, one of a kind.

You speculate that this website will go really, really far. It will make you billions of dollars after you exit and get acquired by Google. You can imagine yourself swimming in a pool with your future wife Ayda Jebat full of RM50 notes already.

After telling few of your friends about it (and always by starting the conversation with — “Eh, this is a secret ah, don’t tell anybody. I don’t want people to know about this and copy.”) you find yourself a co-founder who believe in your vision.

The both of you then start building wireframes on how the website would look like. You identify your target market and have a marketing plan in place. Since you worked in a management consulting firm before, your business plan slides exceed 30 pages.

Continue reading “Starting a Startup: 3 Reasons Founders Get It Wrong” »

It’s lunch time and two coworkers (both running their own exciting startups), Chris and Rizal are trying to figure out where to eat (a common Malaysian problem).

The conversation went a little something like this:

Chris: Who’s gonna Kaodim lunch today?

Rizal: You hutang iMoney bro. Of course you gonna buy today.

Chris: WTF, where got? Why all of a sudden like MaGIC I owe you money?

Rizal: Please bro. How come you forget such things. Up to today, you owe me1337 Ringgit Plus man. Remember you used my credit card to buy AWS Credits.

Chris: Oh ya hor I totally forgot about that. Oklah today’s lunch on me. Can you Recomn a place to makan?

Rizal: Now Offpeak hours, should be no jam lah. Ara Damansara there can?

Chris: Cool, I got a Baucar for a restaurant there. Got good reviews on Hungry Go Where also.

A bus passes.

Continue reading “A Malaysian Startup Conversation” »

Google AdWords adalah antara strategi pemasaran kegemaran saya. Sekarang ini, apa sahaja perkara yang perlukan jawapan atau pencerahan kita akan “Google”. Sebagai contoh:

“Eh bro, apa nama player yang botak, dulu main kat MU, posisi midfield tu?”

“Jap bro. Aku Google”

*Google search: “bald, midfield, man united player”*

“Juan Sebastian Veron, bro.”

Daripada segi pemasaran pula, Google AdWords membolehkan kita untuk mengiklankan produk bagi kata kunci (keyword) tertentu. Sebagai contoh, sekiranya kita buat bisnes servis aircon, kita mungkin akan mengiklankan servis kita apabila pelanggan menaip “aircon service” di google.

Masalahnya, sekarang ini sudah terlalu ramai orang mengiklankan produk mereka di Google AdWords, terutamanya untuk kata kunci umum. Kita perlu bersaing dengan orang lain untuk memastikan iklan kita berada di atas ataupun sekurang-kurangnya muka surat 1.

Continue reading “Teknik Pengiklanan Google Adwords Menggunakan “Long Tail”” »